Zardnaar
Legend
Everyone knows the internet is full of toxic negativity a tiny percentage of people pay much attention to what people have to say online. They pay far more attention to what people they know are saying.
All I know is that when 4E came out I was heavily involved with public games. We saw quick growth immediately after release, with a relative handful of old school players not making the switch. But over the course of a couple of years, it just died. The sales of the books reflected that as well (as did the previous couple of editions for that matter), there were decent sales immediately after launch and then it tanked. You don't get that if the internet bogeyman had scared people off.
Basically what I've been saying for years. If 4E sold well it was that initial surge.
Collspsing in two years lines up with what Tweet, Paizo and lots of anecdotes say.
You have to design an edition people are enthusiastic about. 3.0 did have that but social media didn't exist as such.
4E social media was in its infancy they sold a game to sell minis to push around a battle map that no one really wanted. I remember that negative youtube Dragon 4E video it only had 40k views at the time.
4E big failure was it's lack of appeal the negativity flowed from that. They used MMO language as well.
5.5 might get greeted with somewhere between indifference to mildly positive I don't see it provoking a poo storm.